


Irreplacable

by allaire mikháil (allaire)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), actions have consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 23:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11390820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allaire/pseuds/allaire%20mikh%C3%A1il
Summary: Tony Stark has always been larger than life. Maybe Steve forgot that the man underneath the armor was all too human.





	Irreplacable

“Tony! Stop walking away from me!”

Tony turns and looks at Steve with an expression Steve cannot read all the way. There's incredulity in it, and of course the ever-present anger that seems to underlie all of his recent interactions with Steve.

“I don't know how many times I have to repeat it before it gets through your thick skull, Rogers – I am _not_ building Barnes a new arm.”

Tony's sneer at Bucky's name isn't hard to interpret at all.

Steve wants to grab Tony by the shoulders and _force_ him to listen. But ever since Friday threatened to use all the armors in the workshop to defend her creator (and had them all take a step forward as proof, and wasn't _that_ spine-chilling as hell), Steve knows better than to touch his stubborn friend.

“You were the one who shot it off, after all,” Steve argues. “You owe it to him to supply him with a replacement!”

Tony drops the gadget he was holding. It shatters when it hits the ground. DUM-E rolls forward with a distressed-sounding beep and attempts to pick it up and hand it back to Tony.

Tony's hand shakes when he pats one of the robot arm's support struts and quietly orders it to sweep up the shards.

He doesn't even curse. Friday remains utterly silent as well.

Steve refuses to feel even a little bit guilty. Whatever it was, it surely is replaceable. Evidently the topic is rather upsetting to Tony, but living with only one arm is even _more_ upsetting to Bucky, and after all – fair is fair.

Tony shoves his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants, distressed and oil-stained as they are, and hisses: “I don't owe you or him _shit_ , Rogers. But why don't we talk about 'owing'.

“You owe me a better explanation than you were trying to 'spare' either me or yourself, or that one day 'hopefully I could understand'. You _lied_ to me. For over two years. And when I entered a situation in which I was bound to find out the truth in the worst way possible, you didn't even have the decency to take me aside and tell me. Instead, you just _stood there_ and let me watch all the gory details of my own parents' murder.” Once finished with his rant, Tony clutches his chest and pants. The expression on his face this time isn't hard to determine: It's utter loathing.

Steve feels one foot tall.

“I--I didn't know how to tell you, Tony,” he pleads. “I didn't want you to hate Bucky.”

“--Or to have me interfere in your search for him,” Tony throws in. “And maybe give me incentive to head a movement to have him put in jail for what he did. Do you know how many friends and relatives of the Winter Soldier's victims are still out there? You seem to be particularly adept at ignoring all the suffering your buddy caused, wittingly or unwittingly.”

“It wasn't Bucky's fault!” Steve yells.

“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Thankfully, that's for the experts to decide now,” Tony says sharply. “Barnes will be evaluated, and then he'll have his day in court.”

Steve opens his mouth to argue further. Seeing Bucky in the institution that holds him until his trial is--is simply _perverse_ , that's what it is. Bucky, who fought so bravely for his country. Bucky, who but for the grace of God would have made the ultimate sacrifice back in '44. Bucky, who deserves _so much better_ than being put behind bars like an _animal_.

“Do you only have your patriot on when it isn't about your BFF?” Tony inquires. “Wait, what am I saying, of course you only believe in truth, justice and the American way when it suits you,” Tony sneers. “But we're going off-topic, Captain No-Longer-Quite-That-Perfect. You think I 'owe' it to Barnes to make him a new arm.”

“You do,” Steve insists.

“Why?” Tony's question sounds honestly curious.

“Because you destroyed his old one! No one, even in Wakanda, has been able to replicate something like it,” Steve explains earnestly. “Hydra created something unique, what with the way it was fused to his nervous system.”

Tony looks intrigued for a moment. Steve hopes the inventor's curiosity will overcome his dislike of Bucky. There's never been a challenge Tony has been able to pass on.

“Please. Your suit is a marvel of engineering,” Steve says, and doesn't even choke on the words. If buttering up Tony will help get this thing done, then Steve's prepared to flatter to Tony's heart's content. “No one in the world is better suited to recreating something like Bucky's mechanical arm.”

“Bionic arm,” Tony corrects absentmindedly. “That's all nice and well, but you still haven't told me why I should waste my time, effort, money and yes, genius, on the man whose hands murdered my parents.” His voice rises mockingly, “Or are you trying to tell me it's for the sake of our 'friendship'?”

He wipes his mouth with a shaking hand and leaves a dark smear behind before his hand disappears back in his pocket.

Steve is stumped. He's tried all the approaches Natasha had recommended: Appealing in turn to Tony's guilt, curiosity, competitiveness, generosity and vanity. But Tony's still resisting.

Tony sighs. “Really, Rogers. What will get you out of my workshop? Let's make it easy on us both. You're saying I owe Barnes a new arm, because the old one was irreplacable, and as the person who destroyed it, I'm obligated to compensate him for it.”

Steve starts nodding, but there's an uncomfortable feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

“Does that apply to all that happened in Siberia? We _are_ talking only about Siberia, aren't we?”

Steve feels the trap closing around him. “Tony. If you're trying to tell me that I owe you a new suit, or a new arc reactor, that's bullshit. You've already built a number of new suits.” He gestures around them at the ten, fifteen suits in various shapes and colors lining the walls of the workshop. He recognizes the underwater suit, and the stealth suit, and the briefcase suit, and one in black with red and gold accents that looks far more menacing than any he's ever seen Tony wear. They all have a glowing arc reactor set into their breastplates.

“Oh, I'm not talking about either,” Tony says breezily. “I'm talking about something a bit more intangible.”

“Like your belief in my reputation as Captain America?” Steve scoffs. “You were the only one of our team who's _never_ put me on a pedestal. You've never believed in the propaganda; you've always seen me as who I am. A guy from Brooklyn who had the incredible luck to run into a scientist with great plans. 'Everything special about me came out of a bottle', remember?”

Tony just stares at Steve's face, and his lack of a denial at Steve's self-criticism stings. Steve never thought their friendship would be so easily erased.

“Oh no, we're not talking about my thoughts or expectations, Rogers. They're my own business, and if I got disappointed in my childhood hero, that's my own problem as well.” He coughs.

“What is it, then?” Steve throws up his hands. Tony is utterly infuriating like this.

“You and Barnes also destroyed something irreplacable in that bunker,” Tony claims. “And unless and until you find a way to recompense me for what you took from me, Barnes can live the rest of his life as a one-armed bandit for all I care.”

Steve's hands twitch. He crosses them behind his back before the need to _shake_ Tony becomes all-encompassing.

Tony turns and addresses his AI: “Fri, display schematic TSCC-004.”

A hologram springs to life in front of the closest workbench. It's of what appears to be the chest area of a humanoid figure. Steve looks closer. The ribcage looks like patchwork, and the sternum's clearly artificial. The lungs look deformed. The hologram shows a couple of denser, lighter spots in and next to the heart.

“Better than an X-ray or an MRI, isn't it?” Tony inquires softly. “What a good-looking image of a far less good-looking model. See, that's my chest post-Siberia.”

Steve swallows, horror climbing up his throat.

“You and your buddy were so very successful in tag-teaming me. I held back; you two didn't. And when you repeatedly slammed your shield into my chest with the full force of your serum-enhanced strength, you broke, sometimes even shattered, all but three of my ribs. Not that my ribcage had been all that robust before you started, anyway, due to my two arc-reactor related surgeries. The broken ribs compromised my lungs. And my heart. See the foreign objects in my heart?” Tony gestures.

“These are stents. They hold several arteries in my heart open so it can do its job and pump my blood through my body. The pacemaker next to it helps it beat regularly. Without all of these, I'd be dead. I coded three times during the marathon surgeries I went through once Vision had retrieved me from Siberia. My lung volume has never been great after Afghanistan, but now it's been reduced by another 20%. My heart is at maybe 55% of its original performance.

“Want to know by how many years you shortened my life when you beat me to a pulp and then left me behind in sub-zero temperatures? My life expectancy's never been all that high. Too much unhealthy living in my misspent youth. Drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. Then Afghanistan. But Stark men reach ninety. Easily.”

Tony's look makes it clear that this is another reminder of Howard's life that ended years before its time. Steve feels numb.

“I thought I might live to see sixty. Maybe sixty-five. Now, though? Now I'll be lucky if I make it to fifty. I'm forty-four years old nowadays.” Tony stops his relentless flow of words. He looks contemplative, perhaps slightly regretful. “I'll die before you've finished your parole, Steve. Before Spider-Man graduates from university. Before Rhodey's Jeanette – my goddaughter – enters high school.

“Now explain to me, Steve – how is _that_ fair? How do you intend to recompense me for _that_? Extremis, even after all the tinkering Helen and I did with it, still has only a 40% chance of working and not killing me. Tell me, should I gamble with the last few years of my life? To either die in agony or remake myself in the image of _fucking_ Aldrich Killian?”

Each word has hammered into Steve like a repulsor blast. He can't answer.

He stumbles from Tony's workshop and barely makes it into the elevator, blinded as he is by tears.

It's true some things _are_ irreplacable, after all.


End file.
